California’s Unionized Construction Workforce: Surprisingly Low Rates…and Dropping

On January 23, 2013, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics issued its annual Economic News Release: Union Members Summary. It announced that the overall union membership rate – the percent of wage and salary workers who were members of a union – dropped from 11.8 percent in 2011 to 11.3 percent in 2012. The rate of union workers in the private workforce was 6.6 percent in 2012, while the rate of union workers in the government workforce was 35.9 percent.  In 2012 there were more public employee union members (7.3 million) that private industry union members (7.0 million).

In the United States, 13.2 percent of construction workers belonged to a union in 2012 (with 13.7 percent represented by a union). This percentage has been declining since the late 1960s. It dropped from 14.0 percent in 2011.

California

Los Angeles-Long Beach-Riverside Metropolitan Area

San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose Metropolitan Area

What is stunning about these percentages is the decline in the unionized percentage of the California construction workforce during and after the collapse of the residential construction market from 2007 to 2009.

In the 2000s, residential construction was generally non-union throughout the state, and the virtual stop to residential and commercial construction should have proportionally lifted the percentage of union workers as public works and health care (types of building construction with a stronger union presence) became more dominant in the industry.

In addition, it appears that construction unions were not successful in holding or gaining market share through their political strategy of government-mandated Project Labor Agreements and their litigation strategy of exploiting the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) to pressure private developers into Project Labor Agreements. One can only guess at the percentage of unionization if top construction union officials did not promote and practice these strategies.

I expect someone at the University of California Miguel Contreras Labor Program will one day help the unions examine the possible causes of this unexpected trend in the California construction industry. For now, I will guess that difficult economic circumstances starting in late 2007 and early 2008 created a more competitive bidding environment (on both public works and private construction) in which unionized contractors had difficulty competing for and winning bids. Prosperous economic times (such as 2000 and 2006) seem to benefit union representation in the construction industry. At state and local government meetings in 2009, 2010, and 2011, construction union lobbyists routinely reported 25 to 35 percent unemployment rates among their membership.

The best neutral source of information regarding union density is the Union Membership and Coverage Database, available at www.unionstats.com. This is an Internet data resource providing private and public sector labor union membership, coverage, and density estimates compiled from the Current Population Survey (CPS), a monthly household survey, using U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics methods.

Union statistics in specific metropolitan areas for private construction are found in this category: III. Metropolitan Area: Union Membership, Coverage, Density, and Employment by Metropolitan Area and Sector, 1986-2012. Two regions of California are included in this category: the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles.

Kevin Dayton is the President and CEO of Labor Issues Solutions, LLC and is the author of frequent postings about generally unreported California state and local policy issues at www.laborissuessolutions.com.